Top Ten Toughest Endurance Races

Stamina used to be so simple. Back in the old days, all you had to do was slap on a pair of running shoes, zip up your sweat suit, hit the sidewalk for a couple of miles and you were good. Work your way up to 10K or so and you were even better. Wind up at 26 miles and 385 yards--not the distance from Marathon to Athens, mind you, but of the marathon route for the 1908 London Olympics, so the race would start and finish in front of the Royal Box at Windsor Castle--and you were unbelievable.

Not any more. Though marathoning was the bragging right of choice for some 361,000 Americans last year, it's plain vanilla compared with the raft of hard-charging, mind-numbing and potentially life-threatening endurance competitions that now unfold regularly in every corner of the globe. From Olympic-length triathlons to full Iron Mans, 12-hour mountain bike rallies to 24-hour "single-push" ultramarathons, seven-day, multi-sport team adventures to around-the-world solo sailing races, there are now plenty of challenges to inspire the inner adventurer in any of us.

"Society has changed, and these days everyone just wants to see how far they can go," says
Nick
Moore
Nick Moore
, an adventure racer and competition organizer with CORE Sports in Boise, Idaho who, until recently, worked coordinating the now-defunct Balance Bar Adventure Race Series for the international sports marketing firm
Octagon
. "You can even see it on a corporate level. Ten years ago, sales meetings were held in boardrooms or maybe on the golf course. Then five or six years ago, companies got into 'team-building' events, sending their middle managers out on white-water rafting tours. Now executives are putting together their own teams for multi-sport events that can go on for days. I don't know what it means, but it's only getting crazier."

Indeed. Though adventure racing's numbers are still dwarfed by traditional marathons, the genre is where much of the endurance action is these days. There were 350 officially sanctioned adventure events in the U.S. last year, according to the Austin, Tex.-based United States Adventure Racing Association, up from 270 in 2003 and 160 in 2002. Though close to half of the states have never been the site of an adventure race, the group estimates some 40,000 Americans have still found a way to participate in at least one.

Today, major events such as Odyssey Adventure Racing's Appalachia-based "Beast of the East" and The Raid World Championship (formerly Raid Gauloise) can be counted on to attract myriad professional and amateur teams from around the world, as well as sponsorship from companies like
Nike
,
GoLite
and
Columbia Sportswear
.

Though inarguably audacious, adventure racing is hardly the only endurance genre out there. In the wilds of Alaska, the 33rd running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race just wrapped up with a field of 79 mushers, 63 of whom worked their way from Anchorage to Nome. This year's winner,
Robert
Sorlie
Robert Sorlie
of Hurdal, Norway, completed the 1,161-mile route in nine days, 18 hours, 39 minutes and 31 seconds--an average rate of 4.649 miles per hour.

In rough-and-tumble North Africa, the 27th Dakar Motor Rally finished this year on January 16, with just 38% of the initial 230 motorcycles, 165 automobiles and 70 trucks able to make it all the way from the start in Barcelona to the finish line in Dakar.

And on February 25,
Bruce
Schwab
Bruce Schwab
became the first American to finish the Vendée Globe, a solo, non-stop, around-the-world sailing race that took him and his Open 60 Class racing sailboat, Ocean Planet, more than 23,000 miles in 109 days, 19 hours, 58 minutes and 57 seconds. (He finished ninth behind record-breaker
Vincent
Riou
Vincent Riou
of France, who wrapped up his sails--and the race--on February 2.)

"Solo sailing is an extreme endurance sport, and the longer you go the more patience and mental fortitude you have to have," says Schwab, who traces the launch of his efforts not to the Vendée's official start at Les Sables d'Olonne, France last November 7, but to the end of 1999 when he quit his job running the largest professional rigging shop in California to pursue his dream.

Then there are those endurance fanatics for whom organized races aren't enough for their impressive abilities.
Dean
Karnazes
Dean Karnazes
, a 42-year-old runner from San Francisco and author of Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, has trotted off thousands of miles since completing his first marathon at the age of 14. He ran his first ultramarathon--technically, anything beyond the official marathon length--at age 30, with a 30-mile haul.

Last year, Karnazes warmed up for the Napa Valley Marathon with a 100-mile run from his home, timing the 18 hours he estimated it would take him to cover the distance so that he arrived at the starting line just as the gun went off. He recently ran 262 miles--the equivalent of ten marathons in a row--non-stop. And in 2004, Karnazes hauled himself 135 miles through Death Valley to win the Kiehl's Badwater Ultramarathon, topping off the victory by scuttling 11 extra miles to the top of Mount Whitney.

"The appeal of ultramarathoning is that I think I can go farther," says Karnazes, who estimates that the community of ultramarathoners now has upwards of 12,000 members in the U.S. "I think my endurance is still improving, and I'm always up for pushing the envelope even further."

For those with a hankering to see how far their own personal envelopes can go, we've compiled the Top Ten Toughest Endurance Races in a slide show. Held from Alaska to the middle of the Atlantic, they run the gamut from horseback riding to mountain biking, canoeing to sailing, running to triathloning, and everything in between. Just bring your willpower and plenty of fluids--you're going to need 'em.